ISO far-IR spectroscopy of the black hole candidate GRS 1915 + 105

Details ISO far-IR spectroscopy of the black hole candidate GRS 1915 + 105 ISO far-IR spectroscopy of the black hole candidate GRS 1915 + 105

Sep 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998a%26a...337..729w&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.337, p.729-738 (1998)

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

2

Stars: Individual: Grs 1915+105, Ism: Clouds, Infrared: Ism: Continuum, Infrared: Ism: Lines And Bands, Infrared: Stars

Scientific paper

referee We have observed the black hole candidate and Galactic superluminal source GRS 1915+105 with ISO LWS and SWS in March 1996 and March 1997 when the source was at fairly low X-ray and radio flux levels. If the source is associated with a dense molecular cloud, then corresponding far-IR continuum and line fluxes should be easily detectable and the data should constrain models for accretion from ISM (Maloney et al. 1997). The integrated fluxes in the SWS (2.3 - 45.2 mu m) and LWS (43.2 - 195.6 mu m) are 2.5 x 10(-17) and 8.9x 10(-17) W/cm(2) , respectively. The continuum above 50 mu m is well represented by thermal black body radiation of T = (25.9 +/- 0.8) K, modified by a dust emissivity component epsilon ~ lambda (-1.5) . This can be indicative of a dust cloud with radius rDust ~ 0.3 pc, and mass MDust ~ 5.5 Msun. However, we do not detect significant line emission in the background subtracted LWS spectrum of GRS 1915+105, as predicted by Maloney et al. (1997) for far-IR lines of the ambient ISM excited by compact objects, and the 3sigma upper limits are below 7.5 to 9.6 x 10(-20) W/cm(2) for prominent lines as [OI], [OIII], [NII] and [CII]. The non-detection of fine-strucure lines implies that either GRS 1915+105 is not embedded in a dense molecular cloud or, if the source would be indeed close to such a cloud, the source X-ray luminosity averaged over the past few hundred years is significantly below 10(37) erg/s so that line intensities are low. We conclude that the far-IR continuum emission from the source region, with T = 26 K not unusual for the ISM, is most likely not related to GRS 1915+105 and that most probably GRS 1915+105 is not surrounded by dense ISM, so that the lack of detected line emission is a consequence of the absence of material suitable for irradation. Based on observations with ISO, an ESA project with instruments funded by ESA Member States (especially the PI countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) with the participation of ISAS and NASA.

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